In my opinion the Pope really needs to publicly respond about what He knew of Cardinal McCarrick’s abuses and predatory nature, and WHY He elevated Him instead of sanctioning Him or turning Him over to authorities…..Then what He said below shocked me the most and I’m ASHAMED of my church!!

Pope Francis refused to comment on Viganò’s charge, saying only, “I read the statement this morning, and I must tell you sincerely that, I must say this, to you and all those who are interested: Read the statement carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word on this.”

The letter, originally signed by 53 seminarians, professors, consecrated women, theologians, missionaries, and mothers of the Church, implores:

Our hearts are broken, our faith tested, by the escalating crisis engulfing our beloved Church. We are angry, betrayed and disillusioned. The pain and suffering of the victims never ends, as each news cycle brings more horrific revelations of sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, cover-ups, and deceit—even at the Church’s highest levels.

The letter goes on to state very clearly the most pressing matter for most Catholics right now:

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s recent statement impels us to reach out to you directly for answers. His testimony accuses you, Holy Father, and highly placed cardinals of turning a blind eye to former Cardinal McCarrick’s egregious behavior, and promoting this predator as a global spokesman and spiritual leader. Is this true?

Pope Francis refused to comment on Viganò’s charge, saying only, “I read the statement this morning, and I must tell you sincerely that, I must say this, to you and all those who are interested: Read the statement carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word on this.”

This non-response bewildered faithful Catholics everywhere who feel it’s far past time to break the silence surrounding the sexual abuse and cover-ups plaguing the Church. The Catholic women go on to chastise the pope for so flippantly ignoring their sincere desire to understand the truth:

LOS ANGELES — Anthony Grigore is a Democrat. But as he waited Thursday at an In-N-Out Burger in El Segundo for his meal, Grigore made it clear party loyalty would only go so far.

Just hours earlier, the head of the California Democratic Party called for a boycott of the famed burger chain after a public filing revealed that the company had recently donated $25,000 to the state’s Republican Party.

“Eating at In-N-Out is such a standard thing to do across California,” Grigore said, dismissing the boycott idea as a bit silly.

California has emerged as the center of the Democratic resistance since President Donald Trump took office. But this activism might have met its match when it comes to In-N-Out, a California institution that some hold with the same level of esteem as the Golden Gate Bridge and Joshua Tree.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D.) froze a probe into the prosecutor’s handling of the Harvey Weinstein case shortly after receiving a donation from a lawyer once connected to Weinstein.

Weinstein fell from grace in 2017 after dozens of women came forward and alleged they had been raped or sexually harassed by the Hollywood mogul. In one case, New York police secretly recorded Weinstein admitting he groped a woman without her consent and had done the same to other women, but he was never prosecuted.

The Manhattan district attorney who declined to bring charges, Cyrus Vance, Jr., later received a $10,000 donation from Weinstein’s attorney David Boies. In March, Cuomo asked the New York attorney general’s office to investigate Vance’s handling of the Weinstein case.

What a classless act to not invite Sarah Palin to John McCain’s funeral! I totally agree not inviting Trump was the right decision….Sarah NEVER said a bad thing about McCain, she loved him dearly!………..Papa Mike

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, has been excluded from his funeral.

Breitbart News has independently confirmed an earlier report in People magazine, which reported that Palin was not sent an invitation, and was told through intermediaries to stay away from the ceremony.

McCain fundraiser Carla Eudy confirmed to People that Palin had not been invited — possibly, People speculated, at the behest of the McCain family.

The news comes on the tenth anniversary of the date in 2008 when Palin was announced as McCain’s pick for Vice President.

Palin now joins President Donald Trump on the list of those barred from the funeral.

But unlike Trump, Palin never feuded with McCain and never criticized him.

When news broke on Saturday of McCain’s passing, Palin said: “Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life — and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self.

“John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times. My family and I send prayers for Cindy and the McCain family.”

Last year, when McCain was reported to have said that he regretted choosing Palin instead of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-VT), Palin described the news as a “gut punch” but refused to blame McCain personally, telling the UK Daily Mail that she blamed his “ghostwriters” for such reports.

When McCain selected Palin as his running mate, the two had both built reputations as corruption-busting “maverick” leaders who were not afraid to buck their own parties.

Interesting perspective from someone who rode a bicycle through CUBA……

I’m a 73yr. old guy who has gone to Europe, Canada, Mexico and now Cuba for bicycle road trips, I thought you might enjoy my report.

On February 1st I flew to Atlanta, met some friends and we flew to Cancun,

Mexico. We spent 4 days there, mostly touring the Mayan ruins of Tulum and

Chichen Itza and getting ready for the next part of the adventure. Seven more people flew in and we all boarded a Mexican airline, Interjet, and flew to Havana for a week of bicycle riding in Cuba.

Cuba, where nothing works, including the people. Unemployment is 48% and of those who do work, 8 out of every 10 work for the government. Before heading to the western part of the island, we spent a night in Havana at the

Riviera Classic, the finest hotel at one time. 20 stories with 3 elevators, but only one worked. Contrary to what I found in the rest of the country, my shower only had hot water. Turn the knobs all you want, but you only got hot, scalding water.

The stories about the old cars is quite true, but many of those cars are used to take tourists on tours of the city. $30.00 gets you 2 hours in a 1952 Cadillac convertible and you can pile in as many people in as you want.

Old Chevys seem to be the most popular and a few are quite nicely restored.

They all fell in the 1941 to 1957 range. I saw nothing newer than a 57. By restored, I mean they look good on the outside, but as our Cuban tour guide said, there would not be a V8 under the hood. The original had failed decades ago and with no parts to fix it, other means had to be found.

Generally, that involved putting a 4 cylinder Russian made diesel in and making the necessary changes to get it to fit and mate up with an unknown transmission.

WASHINGTON — In the first Senate session since Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) death, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) had fighting words for anyone who would speak ill of his late colleague.

“I don’t know what’s going to be said the next few days about John McCain by whomever … I don’t know what’s going to be done,” Isakson said.

“But anybody who in any way tarnishes the legacy of John McCain deserves a whippin’,” the George lawmaker added. “‘Cause most of the ones who would do the wrong thing by John McCain didn’t have the guts to do the right thing when it was their turn. I would say to the president or anybody in the world, it’s time to pause and say this was a great man. He gave everything for us. We owe him nothing less than the respect that he earned.”

The first time Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja ever heard voices on the radio, he panicked. “Fuck,” he remembers thinking, “those people have been inside there a long time!” It was 1966, and Rodríguez woke from a nap to the sound of voices. There was nobody else in the room, but the sounds of a conversation were coming from a small wooden box. Rodríguez got out of bed and crept towards the device. When he got closer, he couldn’t see a door, a hatch, or even a small crack in the box’s surface. Nothing. The people were trapped.

Rodríguez had a plan. “Don’t worry, if you all move to one side, I’ll get you out of there,” he yelled at the radio. He ran towards the wall at the other end of the room, the device in his hand. There, breathless and red in the face, he held it high above his head and brought it down hard against the brick wall, in one violent swing. The wood splintered, the speaker popped out of its casing, and the voices fell silent. Rodríguez dropped the radio on to the floor.

When he knelt down to search through the debris, the people weren’t there. He called for them, but they didn’t respond. He searched more frantically, but they still didn’t appear. “I’ve killed them!” Rodríguez bellowed, and ran to his bed, where he hid for the rest of the day.

Rodríguez was in his early 20s. He did not have any learning disabilities. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest his intelligence was below average. But he was ignorant of the most basic technology because, between the ages of seven and 19, according to his own testimony, Rodríguez lived alone, far from civilisation, in the Sierra Morena, a deserted mountain range of jagged peaks that stretches across southern Spain

His story is that he was abandoned as a child of seven, in 1953, and left to fend for himself. Alone in the wild, as he tells it, he was raised by wolves, who protected and sheltered him. With no one to talk to, he lost the use of language, and began to bark, chirp, screech and howl.

Twelve years later, police found him hiding in the mountains, wrapped in a deerskin and with long, matted hair. He tried to flee, but the officers caught him, tied his hands and brought him to the nearest village. Eventually a young priest brought him to the hospital ward of a convent in Madrid, where he stayed for a year and received a remedial education from the nuns.

It is almost impossible to imagine what it would be like to emerge into adulthood without any of the socialisation that the rest of us unconsciously absorb, via a million imperceptible cues and incidents, as children and teenagers. When he left the convent hospital, adjusting to life among humans brought with it a series of shocks. When he first went to the cinema – to see a Western – he ran out of the theatre because he was terrified of the cowboys galloping toward the camera. The first time he ate in a restaurant, he was surprised he had to pay for his food. One day he went into a church, where an acquaintance had told him God lived. He approached the priest at the altar. “They tell me you’re God,” he said. “They tell me you know everything.”

In the 50 years since he was found in the wilderness, Rodríguez has struggled to get a handle on society’s expectations. He lived in convents, abandoned buildings and hostels all over Spain. He worked odd jobs on construction sites, in bars, nightclubs and hotels; he was robbed and exploited: people took advantage of his unworldliness. Some people did try to help him, but most found him awkward and uncommunicative, and he was largely shunned by society. “For most of my life,” Rodríguez told me, “I had a very bad time among humans”.

A convicted sex offender received an unpleasant surprise when he arrived in court for sentencing on August 22 when he was attacked by the father of one of his victims.

Donald Courtney Biggs, 40, pleaded guilty in February “to a felony count of transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity in a case that the U.S. Attorney’s Office says involves at least two years of secret recordings of juveniles changing clothes, showering and using the bathroom in his home, on multiple church trips and at summer camps,” the Mail Tribune reported.

During the sentencing, 45-year-old Kevin Patrick Smith, who is reportedly the father of one of the victims, jumped over the railing and punched Biggs.

A Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington, D.C., area hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails, two sources briefed on the matter told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Chinese firm obtained Clinton’s emails in real time as she sent and received communications and documents through her personal server, according to the sources, who said the hacking was conducted as part of an intelligence operation.

The Chinese wrote code that was embedded in the server, which was kept in Clinton’s residence in upstate New York. The code generated an instant “courtesy copy” for nearly all of her emails and forwarded them to the Chinese company, according to the sources.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found that virtually all of Clinton’s emails were sent to a “foreign entity,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said at a July 12 House Committee on the Judiciary hearing. He did not reveal the entity’s identity, but said it was unrelated to Russia.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States made the damning accusations in an 11-page testament that was released this weekend.

Pope Francis has been a frequent critic of US President Donald Trump…….Nothing wrong with that! So am I as is the rest of the WORLD!!……Papa Mike

Vatican City, Aug 25, 2018 / 07:00 pm (National Catholic Register).- In an 11-page written testament, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States has accused several senior prelates of complicity in covering up Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s allegations of sexual abuse, and has claimed that Pope Francis knew about sanctions imposed on then-Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI but chose to repeal them.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, wrote that in the late 2000s, Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.

Archbishop Viganò said in his written statement that Pope Francis “continued to cover” for McCarrick and not only did he “not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him” but also made McCarrick “his trusted counselor,” claiming that the former archbishop of Washington advised the pope to appoint a number of bishops in the United States, including Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark.

Archbishop Viganò, who said his “conscience dictates” that the truth be known as “the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy,” ended his testimony by calling on Pope Francis and all of those implicated in the cover up of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse to resign.

On June 20, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on the order of Pope Francis, prohibited former Cardinal McCarrick from public ministry after an investigation by the New York archdiocese found an accusation of sexual abuse of a minor was “credible and substantiated.” That same day, the public learned that the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey had received three accusations of sexual misconduct involving adults against McCarrick. Since then media reports have written of victims of the abuse, spanning decades, include a teenage boy, three young priests or seminarians, and a man now in his 60s who alleges McCarrick abused him from the age of 11. The pope later accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals.

My jaw dropped recently as I read the nine-page syllabus for an online history class I enrolled in for the fall semester at the University of Kansas. Two full pages of the document include arguments against the Second Amendment and chides students who support the university’s concealed carry policy or take advantage of it.

To be clear, this class is on the history of the Japanese Samurai and has nothing to do with U.S. history or the Second Amendment.

What’s more, Professor Eric Rath of the History and East Asian Studies departments also informs students in the syllabus: “With guns allowed on campus, I no longer feel safe having visitors in my office; so instead of in person office hours, I am available for consultation via email or Skype on the hours indicated above and by appointment. Should you wish to meet in person, the appointment will be at a secure or public location of my choosing, but not my office. Please read the statement about concealed weapons at the end of the syllabus.”

Besides being an IDIOT Trump has not an ounce of “class” while not even mentioning the death of John McCain……Papa Mike

President Donald Trump is the subject of a backlash after failing to mention the Florida mass shooting that took place on Sunday and had so far claimed the lives of four people and injured more

The president received angry replies when he opted to post a snip of an article from the Washington Times that claimed Obama got credit for Trump’s work

Earlier that day he was seen arriving at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, on Sunday

A group of both supporters and protesters gathered outside the club with signs as he remained somewhat quiet about the Arizona Republican senator John McCain’s death

He drew criticism after he posted a meager tweet with his condolences to the grieving McCain family but did not acknowledge his rival’s personal achievements

Donald Trump had still failed to pay tribute to the late John McCain’s personal achievements after returning from a spot of golf on Sunday evening, adding insult to injury by additionally making no mention of the Florida mass shooting that had taken place that day.

The President of the United States instead chose to brag about his economic success in a tweet that highlighted lines from an article in the Washington Times.

‘Mainstream Media tries to rewrite history to credit Obama for Trump accomplishments,’ the tweet reads about former President Barack Obama. ‘Since President Trump took office, the economy is booming. The stronger the economy gets, the more desperate his critics are. O had weakest recovery since Great Depression.’

President Donald Trump climbs into his motorcade vehicle outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington on Sunday on his way to Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia

by David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind S.Helderman, The Washington Post…..

Amid betrayals, Trump’s barrier breaks down

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s wall of secrecy – the work of a lifetime – is starting to crack.

His longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty last week to breaking campaign-finance laws, and said he’d arranged hush money payments to two women at Trump’s direction. Both a tabloid executive – who had served Trump by snuffing out damaging tales before they went public – and Trump’s chief financial officer gave testimony in the case.

All three had been part of the small circle of family, longtime aides and trusted associates who have long played crucial roles in Trump’s strategy to shield the details of his personal life and business dealings from prying outsiders.

But, as their cooperation with prosecutors shows, a growing number of legal challenges – including the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III and a raft of lawsuits and state-level probes in New York – are eroding that barrier.

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), a Vietnam war veteran and Republican presidential candidate passed away on Saturday at the age of 81.

His office released a statement about his death.

“Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28pm on August 25, 2018. With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years,” the statement read.

Last July, the senator was diagnosed with brain cancer after doctors discovered a tumor during a medical procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye. In his final days, his family released a statement that McCain chose to “discontinue medical treatment.”

Internet standards expert, CEO of web company iFusion Labs, and blogger John Pozadzides knows a thing or two about password security—and he knows exactly how he’d hack the weak passwords you use all over the internet.

It was 9:15 a.m. on Sunday, May 27. Hospital staff found patient Henry Padilla-Martinez, 20, of an unknown address, wandering the halls of the ER. As an employee attempted to guide Padilla-Martinez back to his room, he noticed the drunken man’s hospital bed was ablaze. Staff ran to grab a fire extinguisher and frantically sprayed down the bed to prevent the fire from spreading further.

Firefighters were called to the hospital. The visible damage included burnt linens, melted plastic framing and discolored flooring. Padilla-Martinez’s room was located directly across from the main nurse’s station.